Still in Rome - Vatican City

A lot has happened since the last time I've updated. We did in fact go to see the Pope on Thursday, which was awesome. I had never been to a Catholic Mass before, so I guess it couldn't have been any better than having it held by the Pope.

We decided to stay an extra day in Rome, and skip the short side trip to Pisa. We originally had planned to get up early this morning and go to the Cinque Terre, stopping in Pisa shortly, so we could get mostly 2 days and 2 nights there, then go to Switzerland. However, the Holy Day that allowed us to see the Pope Thursday night prevented us from seeing the Vatican that day, and forced us to see it this morning. So instead of being rushed through it and then leaving for Cinque Terre afterwards, we decided to just stay an extra night here and only have 1 day and 1 night in the Italian riviera.

Yesterday we got up pretty early to go to Pompeii, and when we got to the train station, the train we wanted to take was "supresso," which apparently means it was cancelled. All the trains were late, which makes sense because it is Italy, and they aren't exactly the most efficient at getting things done. We get on another train, making sure we don't need a reservation for it, and find some seats, which was intense since so many people wanted on due to the other delayed and cancelled trains. A guy we were sitting with, who was like an Italian living in the German part of Switzerland making pizza who was from Naples (where we were going, which is the birthplace of pizza), he told us through broken English with some help of our broken Italian that there was a bomb from World War II that was discovered in between Rome and Naples, and that its the reason why all the trains are late, although we didn't figure out most of those details until much later (read on).

So we get to Naples one and a half hours late, we grab some pizza from a street pizzeria in Naples that the guy on the train suggested (after a really sketchy walk from the train station, Naples is quite dirty, but that might have just been the area we were in), and get on a 40 minute subway ride to Pompeii.

We bought the audio guides for Pompeii, which were really lame and really boring (not worth it), and walked around Pompeii for about 3 hours. I got to see a lot of the things I didn't see last time, like the amphitheatre, great theatre, and Villa of Mysteries. I would show you pictures, but I can't hook my camera up to these computers here in Rome, so it will have to wait.

We get back on the subway train to Naples, and then head back to Rome after more confusion about late and cancelled trains. We get told about halfway through our train ride from other riders (no officials told us anything) that that bomb thing has completely shut down a part of the line we are on and so we have to get off this train, get on a bus to another train station, and get on another train to get to Rome, which is amidst lots of confusion and panicked riders, since no one could really tell us what was going on. It was really sketchy.

We finally get back around 10 o'clock. We wound up spending twice as much time on trains than in Pompeii, so it wasn't quite worth it. We found out that the bomb never went off, but it had been found the day before, so although they are really slow in getting it to a safe place, it wasn't completely unacceptable that all the trains were diverted and people evacuated.

Today we spent 2 hours in line for the Vatican Museum (Sistine Chapel, etc), which we got into about half hour to an hour before they stopped letting people in, and then we went into St. Peter's Basilica, which I have seen before, but they are still really awesome to see. One different thing is that I got to see Pope John Paul II's tomb in the crypts below the basilica, which was really awesome. When I say crypts, I don't mean like cobwebs and skeletons and dark and dingy crypts, these are like clean, brightly lit, marble facade crypts. Again, pictures will be up soon.

So, tomorrow we leave for the Cinque Terre early in the morning. After that, Switzerland for 3 days and 3 nights, and then Paris for a few days before we leave for London next Sunday to start classes next Monday.

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